Posted on 09/23/2020 12:03:33 PM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal
One of the prime points of Bible prophecy, at least from the pre-Trib view, is that America isn’t mentioned in it by name or even in cursory reference. (That’s unless, of course, one sees the reference to the “young lions” in Ezekiel 38:13 as meaning the United States as offspring of “the Merchants of Tarshish,” referring to England.)
This is made even more intriguing when we consider all that we believe is going on in setting the stage for the soon fulfillment of prophecy.
We believe most, if not all, of Paul’s “perilous times” (2 Timothy 3) forewarning is now taking place everywhere we look in our nation—i.e., people are “lovers of themselves,” “without natural affection (abortion and homosexuality)”; they are “fierce” (think “BLM” and “Antifa”), and they’re “traitors” (in reference to the Deep State and others subverting the Constitution), etc.
All these things are, as I like to term them, “America-centric,” in their composition. America seems to be at the center of all the earlier-mentioned stage-setting.
Then we have this president stunning the world, really, with a peace arrangement that no one but perhaps he and a few others saw coming. It’s a stage-setting reality that is indeed profound.
To convince so many within the Arab world to come along with the plan Mr. Trump, Kushner, and the others of the administration have put together is just nothing short of phenomenal. It’s phenomenal when we think about the absolute volatility of the Israel haters within the Arab world, which is so heavily influenced by the chief terrorist regime, Iran (ancient Persia).
So America is at the center of most all primary activity as far as the current ebb and flow of issues and events. That makes it more than a curiosity, really, why God chose not to make this apex nation of history (so far as worldly achievement is concerned) the main focus of prophetic national disposition. Yet America is overtly omitted by name in biblical prophecy.
Why did I title this commentary: “America’s Diminishing Role”?
Again we come to what I see as the strangest presidency in our history. Certainly this is true, it’s reasonable to conclude, because we’re so near the end of this age (Age of Grace/Church Age). The prophetic Word tells us it will be so as the time of Christ’s return nears. Looking around, we’re not disappointed. Things are getting stranger and stranger.
One of the ironies, if that’s what we may call the strangeness, is that this president exerts the most powerful influence on the issue of Middle East peace as any leader ever. At the same time, he’s determined to pull out of that region to an extent that no other leader has attempted since much earlier days when isolationism ruled within American diplomatic spheres of influence. For example, he has announced troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and other areas, much to the chagrin of those in the defense department who are supposed to serve at his pleasure.
Trump doing so, as a matter of fact, constitutes one of the reasons the so-called Deep State opposes his every move. They like to determine such things and have always been able to do so with the cooperation or the acquiescence of those occupying the White House. It’s all part of the power wielded by the military-industrial complex President Dwight Eisenhower forewarned about.
America’s influence in the world, then, despite it being front and center in most every prophetic signal of the approaching Tribulation, is diminishing. The very president put in place by God to serve at this crucial time is an “America-First” chief executive, yet he also is withdrawing the nation from the most focal area of Bible prophecy—even while formulating a peace initiative that might lead to the very covenant Daniel prophesied.
The following news excerpt highlights this dichotomy within Mr. Trump’s presidential action.
Turkey and Iran are engaging in new operations in Africa… It is important to understand that this is in the context of the US generally reducing its global role and comes around 60 years after European colonialism was rolled back…
An article at The National in the UAE in May revealed that Iran has begun to play a role with military proxy groups in the Central African Republic (CAR). The article revealed that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force has played a role in cultivating “terrorist cells.” It has operated, funded, trained and directed proxy groups. Its role and influence in Africa is still far from mapped and known but the article implies it has recruited figures in the CAR and elsewhere. Iran has also been active in Nigeria and also in South Africa and Hezbollah has been active in West Africa…
An article at Al-Ain also asserts that Turkey and Qatar are now working to exert influence in Africa. The article asserts that Qatar has been trying to do influence peddling in Tunisia and that Qatar’s Defense Minister Khalid al-Attiyah has been coordinating with Turkey’s defense minister in discussions about Libya and Tunisia. They want to establish a “joint military training center” in Libya. (Seth J. Frantzman, “Turkey and Iran Are Engaging in New Operations in Africa,” Rapture Ready News, September 18, 2020)
With the key Ezekiel 38–39 players blatantly moving to fill the vacuum developing in the region because of America’s withdrawal—Iran (ancient Persia) and Turkey (much of what comprised ancient Togarmah)—it becomes quite clear that America, although prophetically scheduled to diminish, is nonetheless most prominent in this pre-Rapture era. It will, it’s therefore logical to conclude, take a dramatic set of circumstances to remove the nation so influential in the world power arrangement.
End Times Ping
Terry James covers a lot of ground in this short commentary regarding the self-implosion of America among other happenings.
Please PM me if you wish to be added/removed from the End Times Ping List.
Maranatha!
Why would someone identify Tarshish as England?
This is my OPINION - but I think it warrants thought:
It says The Son of Perdition will appear after ‘he who is taken out of the way’. I have always felt that this means The Christian, i.e., via The Rapture. America was founded on Judeo-Christian values, by God divinely, I believe, for the purpose of A. protecting Israel and b. building up to the point of being able to spread the gospel to everyone on earth before Christ’s return.
So, with the lawlessness we see now, a foreshadow of the AntiChrist’s lawlessness - what is mainly stopping it? The ‘Salt of the Earth’ Christians who do whatever they can (yes, we can talk about that lack of doing more) to thwart all out ungodliness.
I never felt that the ‘he who is taken out of the way’ is the Holy Spirit. That doesn’t make sense, per God’s Word. Jesus and Paul both state that NO man comes to the Father unless the Spirit draws him. There WILL be evangelizing during the Tribulation, by the 144,000 and by the two prophets - by which can ONLY be fruitful if the Holy Spirit is still working in men’s hearts until Christ appears as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
So, picture this - the Rapture takes place. What is left? All the ungodly, or, even ‘decent’ folk who just refused to accept Christ. With millions of Christians not in the government or businesses or what have you - do you think America can survive as it is now? I don’t think so. And with the worldwide exodus of Christians, it will throw the world into chaos and be a perfect excuse to usher in Someone who can bring the nations together as One World Government.
Meanwhile back in Feb 1991:
“The Persian Gulf crisis has flooded bookstores with works by veteran reporters, military planners and first-hand witnesses of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. But most of these books are being outsold by “Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis,” which promises on its cover to tell “what the Bible says about the future of the Middle East and the end of Western civilization.”
“I have never seen this kind of interest in prophecy before, and I’ve been at it a long time,” the book’s 80-year-old author, John F. Walvoord, a former president of the Dallas Theological Seminary, said in an interview on Wednesday.
While warnings about the end of the world are nothing new, Dr. Walvoord’s book is not the only sign that the conflict in the Persian Gulf has stirred an upsurge of interest in the idea that humanity may be hurtling toward a final confrontation that was all mapped out in the Bible. Apocalyptic Literature
In Christian bookstores his book is prominently displayed alongside volumes like “The Last Days Handbook,” “The Rise of Babylon” and “The Coming Antichrist.”
With a million copies of Dr. Walvoord’s book in print since December, the publisher, Zondervan, said sales in 10 weeks have probably doubled those of an earlier edition that had been in print 10 years.
Television evangelists who dwell on prophecies about the final days have seen their ratings shoot up. And Johnny Cash has released a recording, “Goin’ by the Book,” that intersperses statements by President Bush with doomsday lyrics. “The message isn’t pro-war or anti-war,” the singer recently told The Los Angeles Times, but simply that “the big one is definitely on the way.”
By the “big one,” Mr. Cash means Armageddon, what has been called “the ultimate good news-bad news story” for millions of Bible-immersed Christians. The good news is that this final battle and all the tribulations leading to it herald the Second Coming of Christ. The bad news is that most of humanity will be destroyed in the process.
Christians have always looked forward to a Second Coming, the triumphant realization of God’s reign and a last judgment settling all accounts of good and evil. Turmoil Stirs Speculation
But whenever political and economic turmoils shake believers, and especially when the Middle East is involved, speculation about the exact timing and sequence of these last events can rise to a fever pitch, feeding on the vivid imagery of the Books of Daniel and Revelation as well as a few passages elsewhere in the Bible.
This apocalyptic literature is rich with visions of phantasmagoric beasts, amalgams of lions, dragons, eagles, locusts and horses with multiple heads, horns and eyes. Empires of good and evil, led by mysteriously marked figures, engage in cosmic struggles. History is partitioned into numbered periods culminating in divine judgment and a radical transformation of reality.
For a broad swath of biblical interpreters in the churches and the universities, the powerful images of Daniel were a response to the persecution of Jews by King Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria in the second century B.C. The visions in Revelation arise from Roman persecution of Christians almost three centuries later.
The message to biblical readers was to stand fast, to not compromise, that God was in control and would soon bring victory out of apparent hopelessness. It is a message, these scholars say, that believers must retain no less today.
But there have always been Christians who plumbed this obscure, yet compelling, literature not only for insight but also for precise information. They detected the figure of the Antichrist in Roman Catholic popes, in Napoleon, in Hitler. Such past miscalculations do not deter believers like Dr. Walvoord from plotting out “the prophetic calendar.” ‘Armageddon Countdown’
The “Armageddon countdown,” he writes, began with the establishment of Israel in 1948 and with the oil politics that returned the Middle East to the center of world affairs. The “calendar” proceeds this way:
After the current stage of moral chaos and Middle East conflict, a leader of a 10-nation confederacy of Mediterranean and European powers will impose a seven-year peace treaty protecting Israel.
At that point, the “world’s death struggle” will begin. For three and a half years, the strongman will consolidate world power. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union will attack Israel but be supernaturally defeated.
The new world dictator will break the treaty, claim to be God and unleash a terrible persecution of Christians and Jews. Epidemics, earthquakes and a world war centering on the Israeli town of Megiddo — the city whose name, in some theories, is the root of the word “Armageddon” — destroy three-quarters of the world’s population.
Make sure you get on the “This time, unlike those guys that were just as sure, we arent wrong” Ping list. Maranatha!
That’s one of the prevailing theories as to what modern nation is ancient Tarshish.
Merchants of Tarshish traded a lot of tin. Ancient Britannia was a trading center of tin with the Middle East back in the 1st Millennium BC. Phoenicians being the primary merchants/buyers.
Another argument could be made that it’s “Europe” via Spain or Tartessos. Of course ancient Iberians also referred to Ancient Britans as Tartessians.
Who else in your view would oppose a Russian, Turkish, Iranian and African invasion of Europe besides Arab neighbors (Sheba & Dedan)?
Ezekiel 38 definitely IS coming. The current peace deal certainly can’t be popular with Iran (nor probably Turkey).
There was an article or two referencing Iran’s displeasure with it about a week ago or so (and another a couple of days ago). I need to find those.
We definitely live in interesting times.
Good Post!
Here are a few verses for my response:
1 Thessalonians 5:3
Luke 17:26-37 & Matthew 24:37-39
2 Timothy 3:1-7
IMHO, America was absolutely integral in acting as a pseudo “Mid-Wife” for the Nation of Israel. We are now 72 years into their current reign as a modern nation, which is very close to the maximum amount of time they’ve ever had sovereignty over themselves as a nation in their history. Something always happens at the near 80 year mark.
Read what Revelation 3:7-11 about the Church of Philadelphia regarding the End. Note the words “weak” or “little strength” - that accurately describes the remnant Church right now.
I do not think the Holy Spirit is literally ‘taken out of the way’, but that with all indwelt Christ Believers gone, He will allow evil to prevail in ways that was before never possible.
The fence sitters and ‘decent folk’, all of them unbelievers - who survive the first onslaughts of lawlessness (I can see millions dying in those first few weeks and months) will fall on their knees at their foolishness. I do believe tens of millions will come to Salvation in Christ, though they will have to maintain their Salvation like the Jews of old did since the Age of Grace finished with the Rapture of the Church.
The Two Witnesses will be critical for those left behind and those 144,000 Jewish Evangelists. They will need to heed their warnings and listen to them.
I do not believe America will survive in a post-Rapture world. It will be a lawless land of starvation and cesspool of rape & violence. Much like NYC and Portland is right now - only worse by a thousand times.
Order out of Chaos is what the NWO/OWG/OWR will need to implement their plans for a ‘new humanity’.
Thanks for the links Bro!
Young lions reference is how a lot of scholars come to the conclusion of America, Australia, possibly even New Zealand and Canada since the National Emblem of England is the “Three Lions”. Those nations being the young lion offspring of England, the mother lion.
I’m not sure that is 100% accurate and I won’t plant my flag on that hill. But it does make some sense.
Europe has been totally given over to demonic control and their government model is evil to the core. It would certainly make sense for a “Revived Roman Empire” to emerge from the ashes of the Rapture and Ezekiel 38/39 to lead the world into the last 7 years. I could even imagine the Son of Perdition nuking the Islamic world into submission to him (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia etc.).
It was an idea being thrown around by some British writers in the mid-19th century. I suppose it would fit the bill as a faraway place for Jonah to try to sail to.
Nice copy and past there VdK.
I’m sure you worked hard to find that one.../s
That’s correct!
Jonah was heading to Tarshish.
Jonah 1:3 & Jonah 4:2
Given that Nineveh would have been basically in (modern) northern Iraq area, perhaps JVL is correct on Jonah fleeing westward/southwest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineveh
Very possible!
When you run from somebody or somewhere, you usually go in the opposite direction right?
Could be!
Well, then we’re good for a century at least.
‘Cuz there ain’t no power in Europe!
“Nice copy and past there VdK.”
Did you want me to type it all out?
“I’m sure you worked hard to find that one”
That should tell you something that I didn’t have too. It’s THAT easy to point out the absurdity of this.
But glad to know the content of it was unassailable.
:)
Certainly doesn’t seem much military might over there. Other than for regional conflicts and short-term on those (didn’t France run out of bombs when they were helping Obama in Libya?)
The Lying Kenyan did as much damage to the USA’s forces as possible.
The Antichrist, whenever he arises, gets his power from Satan. So he’ll be able to do anything Satan can do. Yikes.
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